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ActionSA will write Gauteng MEC for Education, Matome Chiloane, as well as City of Tshwane Utilities MMC, Daryl Johnston, to urgently address delays in fixing dilapidated infrastructure at Selang Primary School in Kudube, Hammanskraal. 

This follows my visit to the school this morning alongside ActionSA Tshwane Regional Chairperson, Oupa Mathibela, ActionSA City of Tshwane MMC’s André le Roux and Kgosietsile Kgosiemang, and members of the ActionSA Tshwane Caucus and Region. 

We found a severely dilapidated school in a hazardous environment for pupils, after years of neglect by the Gauteng Education Department.

The visit formed part of ActionSA’s public engagement campaign ahead of SONA on 9 February where we will be speaking to South Africans about solutions to fix the country’s most pressing issues. 

A significant contributor to the decline of Selang Primary, which faced closure in 2017, is the failure of the Gauteng Electronic Admissions System. The system, which was introduced by then Gauteng Education MEC, Panyaza Lesufi, in 2016 to provide an equal registration process, has been sending grade 1 pupils to a nearby school despite that school not having the capacity for them. Due to the subsequent decline in new enrolments at Selang Primary, it has not received adequate infrastructure repairs by the Department.

This was allegedly partly due to how principal salaries are structured where the more pupils a principal has, the higher their salaries are. Thus, incentivising principals to accept additional pupils despite space constraints. 

This admissions policy is nonsensical. School staff who spoke to us expressed their frustration at how the Gauteng Education Department has been installing mobile classrooms at a nearby school to accommodate additional pupils, while Selang Primary School had brick-and-mortar classrooms that were able to accommodate additional pupils but which stood empty.

Selang Primary School, in addition to crumbling basic facilities, also had failing boundary walls, a computer room which was unusable as most equipment is dated and broken, only has two taps for over 250 pupils, and has been forced to make use of borehole water which might have been contaminated. 

It is unacceptable that school capable of providing education to learners who desperately need it, stands underutilised and in a state of disrepair while nearby school are erecting temporary facilities to deal with overcrowding. This budget would be better spent on ensuring that Selang is filled and is able to provide quality education to its learners.

ActionSA will therefore write to MEC Chiloane to provide reasons as to why infrastructure repairs have not taken place at the school since 2020, and why enrolment has gone down despite an overcrowded school nearby. 

We will also engage with MMC Johnston to urgently repair sewerage flow in the area to provide a safe environment for pupils regardless of which school they attend. We will also ask him to provide answers as to whether the issue is related to delays at the Rooiwal Waste Water Works. 

ActionSA, through our City of Tshwane Councillor Nkele Molapo while she was in the Gauteng Legislature, has a long history of advocating for repairs at Selang Primary School, and we will continue to place pressure on the Gauteng Education Department to ensure that it occurs. 

ActionSA believes that quality education is South Africa’s best hope of creating a more equitable and prosperous society. The situation at Selang Primary School is only one of hundreds of cases where failed policy implementation, poor management and general incompetence means that access to education does not translate to access to quality education.

Issued by ActionSA Gauteng Chairperson Bongani Baloyi